When Heroes Fall
by Silver Snowblossom
Summary: Asuna could only watch, horrified and unable to move, as Heathcliff brought his sword down. Kirito turned, giving her one last smile, before shattering into a thousand fragments. Gone. "Kirito!" she screamed. (Or, in which Kirito dies facing Heathcliff in the final battle and Asuna grieves.) Part one of the 'Three Times Kirigaya Kazuto Should've Died And Did' Series.


**A/N: Okay, this is a pretty old story. I was digging through my documents and rereading all my finished and unfinished short stories when I found this one and finished it—I think I wrote it some time before **_**A Single Minute's Difference**_**? I wasn't sure whether to post it or not, but well, here it is.**

**Anyway, it's a oneshot, but it's split into two: Kirito's perspective, and then Asuna's. All the dialogue in Kirito's perspective is from either the sub or dub of this episode, and the actions closely mirror what actually happened, so feel free to skip over to Asuna's part if you want.**

Summary: Asuna could only watch, horrified and unable to move, as Heathcliff brought his sword down. Kirito turned, giving her one last smile, before shattering into thousands of fragments. "Kirito!" she screamed. (Or, in which Kirito dies facing Heathcliff in the final battle.) Part one of the 'Three Times Kirigaya Kazuto Should've Died And Did' Series.

**Disclaimer (Are these even necessary? I mean, it's fanfiction, so I think it should be assumed that author's don't own the fandom/franchise?):** I do not, in any way, own Sword Art Online.

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When Heroes Fall

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"_I'll give you a chance… the chance to fight me one-on-one right here, right now. Naturally I'll disable my immortality. Defeat me, and the game will be cleared, allowing all players to log out."_

Kirito had _known_ that there was every chance that things could go wrong. He'd known the odds were stacked against him, that he would probably lose. He'd known that if he'd accepted, it would be a duel to the death, and he most likely would not be the victor. But even so… if there was even the slightest chance that he could end this death game here and now, he _had_ to take it. They'd lost fourteen players during the boss fight this time, and there was still twenty-five to go… how many players would they have had to lose in order to reach the one-hundredth floor and clear the game? If he refused Heathcliff's offer now, all those deaths would be on his conscience. They would be his fault.

He stood now, facing Heathcliff, facing Akihiko Kayaba himself, Dark Repulser in his left hand and Elucidator in his right.

"Kirito, don't!" he heard Agil shout.

"Kirito!" Klein.

He stopped. He knew that it may be his last chance to tell his friends what he needed to, what he should've told them long ago.

He turned to Agil first, thanking him for his support—for him, and for all the players of SAO. Kirito smiled at the surprise on the older player's face. "Yeah, I knew. You acted like you were all about the money, but I know you spent every penny you had on helping the intermediate players level up."

His gaze drifted to Klein, the first person he could truly call a friend, and finally apologized for ditching him on that very first day.

"Damn it, Kirito!" Klein shouted, half-sobbing. "Don't you apologize. Don't you _dare_ apologize now! I won't accept it! I'll never accept it until we're on the other side and you're buying me dinner, goddammit!"

Kirito half-smiled at Klein's response. "You got it. See you on the other side."

He met Asuna's wide eyes, then turned away to face Heathcliff once more. He knew that the chance that he would lose was high, so… "If it's okay, I have a final request to make," he stated.

"What is it?"

"I'm not planning on going down easy, so if I die today, I want your word that you'll fix it so Asuna doesn't kill herself." He stared down at his opponent, daring him to disagree, to say no.

Heathcliff looked a little surprised at his request, before dipping his head in a nod. "As you wish." Immediately, Asuna protested behind him, but he tried not to let her words affect him. She was the most important person in the world for him; if he lost, he didn't want to bring her down with him.

Heathcliff pressed a couple of buttons, dropping his HP to yellow and causing a red hexagonal sign to pop up, announcing his now-mortal status. The leader of the Knights of the Blood Oath drew his sword, and Kirito gripped his swords tighter as he heard Asuna scream his name again.

_This is no regular in-game duel, _he thought, staring down at his opponent. _This is a fight to the death. _Kirito smiled grimly, settling into a fighting stance. _That's fine by me._

_Cause I'm gonna _kill _him!_

Kirito lunged at Heathcliff, Elucidator clanging harmlessly off of the other's shield. He narrowly ducked under a swing of his opponent's sword, then swung back to slash at him again. _He can block whatever I throw at him, _he realized, _because he designed the dual wielding skill, and he knows all of its combos. _He parried another thrust of Heathcliff's sword, which missed him by mere centimeters. _I have to beat him using my own power—without using the sword skills. _

He threw himself backwards, then launched himself into a flurry of attacks. _Faster_, he thought. _I have to go faster!_ Every swing of his sword was blocked, Heathcliff somehow managing to look calm and effortless when doing so. It only fueled his rage, his hatred for the man, the _monster_, that had trapped thousands of innocent people in a death game.

He pushed himself, attacking again and again. Slowly, he could see that he was pushing Heathcliff back; he was gaining the upper hand. He never let up, relentlessly attacking, forcing Heathcliff back step by step under the onslaught.

Then, Heathcliff's sword clipped him, carving a shallow gash on his cheek. On instinct, he activated Eclipse, his strongest dual-wielding sword skill. Heathcliff smirked, and Kirito knew he had lost. He had made a fatal mistake, and he would have to pay the price for it.

Every stab, every thrust of his sword was blocked now, Heathcliff lazily moving his shield to block where he knew they would be coming from. Still, he threw everything he had into his attack, driven by fear and desperation, the hope that if only he just put enough power into his blows, one of them might land.

He drove Dark Repulser forward into Heathcliff's shield, the last hit of this combo. The sword shattered on impact, and, along with it, any hope he might've had of winning.

"Game over, Kirito," Heathcliff said. He lifted his sword, charging a sword skill. Caught in the post-motion freeze, Kirito could do nothing but stare down at his approaching death. He knew he wouldn't be able to dodge, just as he knew this attack would be enough to finish him off, draining all of his health points, deleting him from this world and the real one… forever.

He closed his eyes. _I'm sorry, Asuna. Please… keep living._

The blade fell.

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"_You better not die, you hear me?"_

"_No, I'm going to win. I promise I'll end this world."_

"_Okay. I believe in you, Kirito."_

Asuna watched, torn between worry and apprehension, as Kirito approached Heathcliff. She was vaguely aware of him thanking Agil and apologizing to Klein about something, and then…

"_I want your word that you'll fix it so Asuna doesn't kill herself."_ The words hung in the air, betrayal dripping from every syllable.

"No. Kirito, that's not fair. You can't do that! It's not fair!" she screamed, hoping that he would change his mind. How could he ask her to live without him? It would be the ultimate torture. If he died, he'd be taking her heart, her soul, along with him. If she lived afterwards, she'd only be a hollow shell, an echo of her former self, nothing more than an numb body devoid of anything but a crushing emptiness. Her life would become meaningless.

She hated that he had to do this. She hated that he had to risk his life for her and everyone else—always so selfless, so self-sacrificing. It was who he was, it was what she loved about him, and yet at this moment, she both hated and loved him for it.

Asuna watched, heart in her throat, as Kirito fought Akihiko Kayaba. She tried futilely to move, to help him, to do anything other than watch him fight alone. But she was still bound by the rules of the system, and the paralysis held.

They were moving so fast she could barely see more than a blur, but it looked like they were evenly matched—Kirito with his dual wielding and Heathcliff with his Divine Blade. But, ever so slowly, Kirito was gaining the upper hand. She felt hope rising in her chest—Kirito was winning!

Then, something shifted. The battle swung in Heathcliff's favor. She could do nothing but watch, even though she wanted desperately to help her love.

So she watched. She watched with a sinking heart as Dark Repulser slashed down and shattered against Heathcliff's shield. Asuna tugged at her bonds fruitlessly. _Move!_ She told herself. _Kirito needs you!_

For a second, she fancied that she could almost move. She imagined that the paralysis flickered, if only for a second. And perhaps in another world it did. Perhaps in another world, she would've been able to do something no other player had before. Perhaps in another world, she would've beat the system, if only for a couple seconds, in order to save Kirito.

But in this world, that was not the case. She was still bound by the system, no matter what she tried or wanted. Asuna, lauded as the Lightning Flash and even with all her skill and speed, could only watched helplessly Heathcliff lifted his blade. She wanted to cry. What use was her strength, her speed, when she couldn't _do anything_, couldn't even save the one she loved?

"Game over, Kirito," Heathcliff said. The blade fell.

The next couple of seconds seemed to happen in slow motion. The blade carved a gash across Kirito's chest, and he staggered backwards, a stunned look on his face. Elucidator clattered to the ground, skidding a couple feet across the floor.

Then he fell, and because she was still partied with him, Asuna could watch as his HP drained, rapidly going from yellow to red. It was utter agony, watching him die but being unable to _do anything_ about it.

And then the last pixels vanished completely and he began to glow.

He turned to give her one last smile. _Goodbye, Asuna_, his eyes seemed to say.

Then he shattered

—and her world ended.

His avatar shattered into thousands of fragments, and Asuna's eyes tracked them as they dissolved into nothingness—watched as the last remnants of her love vanished—disbelieving of what her eyes were seeing, hardly able to believe that he was just _gone_. He couldn't be dead—he couldn't. Kirito _couldn't_ be gone.

Out of the corner of her eye, she impassively noted that his HP bar and name had vanished, but she ignored the observation. (Perhaps if she ignored it, ignored any signs that he was dead _gonegonegone, a shower of fragmented pixels_ she would wake up from this horrible dream. She would wake up and find Kirito hovering over her in their little cabin on Floor 22, those dark eyes filled with concern and love. She would wake up and he would be _alive_.)

A scream, half-hysterical, was ripped out of her. "KIRITO!" She choked at the last syllable, the sound coming out strangled, half a sob.

Dimly, she was aware of murmurs rising among the clearers, and a shout of "You monster!" from who she assumed to be Klein, but she didn't care, couldn't find it in herself to care. She was numb to everything, every vein, every artery filled with ice.

Heathcliff stood somewhere in front of her, completely unfazed by the life he had just ended. Distantly, she realized that he was speaking but it was like she was underwater, the sound muffled and distorted. Her eyes were trained on the spot where Kirito had vanished, waiting, _waiting_ for him to miraculously reappear, tell her this was all a prank and he was okay, still alive.

At a purple flash, her gaze drifted dully to Heathcliff, idly noticing that he was immortal once again. She was only brought out of her apathy when, with a couple more swipes of his finger, a matching hexagon popped up over Asuna's own head. And even then she could only find the energy to protest weakly, whereas before she would've _radiated_ recalctrice and defiance, would've screamed and raged against it.

It just didn't seem to matter anymore. What was her life, now, without Kirito? She could hardly remember a time she didn't know him, fierce and brave and so heart-achingly _selfless_, giving and giving, to those who didn't deserve it, who labeled him a beater and couldn't see past their jealousy to the lonely, kind-hearted soul underneath. Giving more and more of himself until there was nothing more to give.

"I will see you on the one-hundredth floor, when you make it that far," Heathcliff said, armor glinting blood-red and she thought she could almost see the bloods of thousands of innocents, of _Kirito_, dripping from him. His hands were stained _redredred_ and _how had none of them seen it before? Kirito_ had seen it, had seen what they were all too blind to. But that was Kirito, always there, able to see past the lies to the truth underneath, always when they needed it.

Asuna barely caught Heathcliff's parting words, as her guild leader—_no, former_ guild leader—vanished in a flash, and the room was silent once more. She picked herself off the ground, the thrice-damned paralysis lifted now that Heathcliff—_Akihiko Kayaba_—was gone. There was stunned silence for a few heartbeats, before pandemonium erupted.

Because no matter how some of them might have hated the beater, there was respect, too, among the clearers for the Black Swordsman. Though some might not have necessarily _liked_ him, all had known that Kirito was their best chance of beating the game, the only one of them that could possibly match Akihiko Kayaba himself. He might have been a solo player, but he was one of the key driving forces behind clearing, second perhaps to only the leader of the Knights of the Blood Oath himself.

And now he was gone. (And to make it worse, _Heathcliff_, the leader they all thought they knew, was gone too. Both of their top clearers, the two best players in the game, gone in one fell swoop.)

With difficulty, Asuna pulled herself out of her grief. There would be time to mourn later, would be time to cry and scream and rage against the unfairness of the world, would be time to fall apart and wonder if she could ever fit the pieces of her life back together, but right here and now, with the betrayal of their own leader like a sword to the heart, her guild needed guidance, needed _her_, their Vice-commander. She couldn't afford to grieve now, to give in to the hopelessness threatening to consume her. She had to be strong for them. If she gave up now, despair would crush the clearers, would finally snuff out their resolve to beat the game.

Then they would be trapped in this death game for an eternity, and Kirito would have given his life for nothing. Asuna could not, _would not_, let his death be in vain.

So, she pushed herself to her feet, shoving her emotions to the back of her mind and making sure her Vice-Commander persona was fixed firmly in place.

Without Kirito and Heathcliff… she would be the strongest clearer they had. Asuna would have to be the one to keep the guild going, to lead the rest of the clearers. She _would_ make sure they beat the game—for Kirito, if nothing else.

And once she made it out of the game, once she was no longer an «Immortal Object»…

She would be with Kirito once again in death.

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**A/N: Uh… please don't kill me? I was re-watching SAO, and in each of the major arcs focused on him (Aincrad, Fairy Dance, Phantom Bullet), he should've/could've died at the end of each one and only survived because of sheer luck (and a tad skill, but mostly luck). So, I thought I'd try my hand at a fic where he actually does die. I guess that would classify this as a character death fic? **

**(Side note, this was originally a part of **_**Three Times Kirigaya Kazuto Should've Died But Didn't In Canon**_**, alternatively titled **_**Three Times Kirigaya Kazuto Should've Died And Did**_**, but it grew longer than the 1K I planned, so I split the series up. All of them follow the dual-perspective format; the second is Kirito and Asuna again, and the third is Kirito and Sinon/Shino Asada. If anyone's interested in the other two (the encounter with Sugou and the encounter with Shinkawa), let me know and I'll put those up.**

**~ Silver Snowblossom**


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